Watch our concert at SoHIP Boston from August 2023!
SUORE PROJECT
The three members of the Suore Project, colleagues for over a decade in the internationally acclaimed ensemble SIREN Baroque, have branched off to form a trio celebrating music composed by nuns. The project’s long-term goal is to compile a far-reaching survey of works composed by nuns through the ages. Suore Project aims to research, transcribe, perform, and record a body of music that has remained largely concealed from the general public. For centuries, silence in women—especially cloistered women—was codified. With our performances and research of this virtuosic repertory, we aim to (re)sound their voices over the convent walls.
Cloistered in our own way during the Covid-19 pandemic, we found in each other reliable weekly collaborators, rehearsing online from three different states. The composers featured in the resulting program (Non Tacere: (Re)sounding Works by Nun Composers of 17th-c. North Italy) labored in a climate where they were both celebrated and censored. The nuns adapted to fluctuating resources and fickle prohibitions of church authorities. Their efforts to perform and publish amidst restrictions and outright bans on musical expression in many of their religious communities inspired us to make do with the resources at hand and build this program despite our separation.
Suore Project recorded Non Tacere in San Francisco in 2021 and has been awarded multiple residencies at Avaloch Farm Music Institute (2022 and 2023). The group is on track to publish a complete modern edition of Rosa Giacinta Badalla’s motets. While our focus began with Italian nuns of the 17th century, our work reaches as far back as Kassia (Eastern Roman, 9th c.) and Hildegard (12th c.), and forward to Emahoy Tsege Mariam Guebrou (Ethiopian, contemporary), with attendant research into the life, spirituality, and performance and publishing history of each composer. We aim for stylistically accurate performances while deploying our own creative resources to vibrantly interpret these works. Kassia’s words guide us: “I hate silence when it is time for speaking.”
Anneke Schaul-Yoder
Anneke studied with Julia Lichten and Marcy Rosen at Yale, Purchase Conservatory, and Mannes College of Music. Anneke performs in both period and modern styles at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, BAM, the 92StY, and other venues in New York and beyond. Anneke is the cellist for various chamber ensembles, including SIREN Baroque, Queens Consort, Skid Rococo, Piano Music & Song Trio, and Eudemonia; she also performs with the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, BalletNext, Morningside Opera, and La Fiocco. She has recorded with the Lumineers, Jade Bird, Shawn Mendes, and members of Antibalas and Arcade Fire. She plays on a French cello from 1713 by Jacques Boquay.
Kelly Savage
Kelly has been praised by the New York Times for her “deft accompaniment.” She is the artistic director of SIREN Baroque and is a founding member of the New York opera company Opera Feroce. Ms. Savage enjoys an active performing schedule as a continuo player and solo harpsichordist. She is an Associate Professor at Berklee College of Music where she teaches ear training. Ms. Savage holds a doctorate from Stony Brook University, where she studied with Arthur Haas and holds masters degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory and the University of Wisconsin—Madison. She co-created Partifi, a popular online part-making tool for musicians.
Brett Umlauf
For over a decade, Brett has brought her "pealing, focused sound" and "luminous yet earthy" (New York Times) performances to historical and new music with troupes Morningside Opera, Company XIV and SIREN Baroque. The Swedish Institute, American Scandinavian Society and Swedish Women's Educational Association have supported Umlauf’s shows about "Sweden’s Shakespeare," C.M. Bellman, with her groups Bellman om Bellman and Skid Rococo. Brett’s Hazelnut Road, a travel-performance project celebrating women religious artists from 9th-c. Byzantium to 17th-c. Peru, is currently underway in Greece and Turkey, where she is exploring the works of abbess-composer St. Kassiane as a 2022-2023 Fulbright fellow.
"Amare et silere, cor, tentas impossibile…”
“Heart, you try in vain to love and be silent…”
-from Bianca Maria Meda’s Cari Musici trans. R. Kendrick